Tag: Picnic at Hanging Rock

Natalie Dormer is developing a TV drama about legendary actress Vivien Leigh as part of a wider deal with Fremantle under the terms of which she will work up a slate of scripted projects. The Vivien Leigh project – “Vivling” – will be made with Fremant…

RTL Group, Europe’s leading entertainment network, saw record revenues for the first half of 2018 fuelled by a strong second quarter. Announcing its figures to June 30 on Wednesday, the Luxembourg-based media giant revealed revenues hit €3.05 billion (…

EXCLUSIVE: Australian up and comer, Madeleine Madden, is set to co-star in Paramount Players’ live action, Dora the Explorer, opposite Isabela Moner and Eugenio Derbez. James Bobin is directing from a script by Nick Stoller and Danielle Sanchez-Witzel…

Larysa Kondracki has signed a first-look television deal with Amazon Studios. Kondracki recently served as the showrunner on the limited series “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” in addition to directing three episodes of the show. “Larysa has a uni…

EXCLUSIVE: Larysa Kondracki, who co-wrote and directed the Rachel Weisz sex-trafficking drama The Whistleblower and is currently showrunner of Amazon’s just-released limited series Picnic At Hanging Rock, has signed with WME. The director-writer-…

(Spoiler alert: Read at your own risk if you haven’t seen all of Amazon’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock.”)

By the end of the Amazon limited series “Picnic at Hanging Rock” audiences still don’t know what happened to the girls who went missing at the beginning. But showrunner and director Larysa Kondracki hopes her “enchanted chiller” will give fans an “emotionally satisfying conclusion” nonetheless.

If that’s not good enough for you, Kondracki told TheWrap she has her own “cockamamy idea” about what happened to the young ladies at the center of the TV adaptation based on Joan Lindsay’s iconic Australian novel of the same name, which the director describes as “‘Heathers’ meets ‘The Breakfast Club,’ with a little bit of ‘The Shining.’”

Former “Game of Thrones” star Natalie Dormer leads the cast as Mrs. Hester Appleyard, the enigmatic headmistress of Appleyard College, a boarding school that she established for young ladies isolated in Australian bushland. The story centers around the mysterious disappearances of three schoolgirls and one teacher on Valentine’s Day in 1900 and the subsequent investigation, covering its impact on students, families and staff at Appleyard College and the nearby town.

“Every single person involved in the show has a different feeling,” Kondracki said, before moving on to her own zainy theory.

“I think none of them existed. I think it all happened in Appleyard’s head,” Kondracki told TheWrap. “She was a woman who was robbed of her own ability to form the role that she wanted to be. Her life was stolen from her by this love/abuser/whatever Arthur is. So I think all of these women, all of these girls are different versions of the kind of woman that she wanted to be and it’s only when she realizes, a little bit too late, that the pretense of what she became was wrong. And really, she probably just needed a good hug or a good shag and a little bit of therapy — and then she jumped off a cliff. So I think it all happens in her head.”

Kondracki said she wants audiences to feel satisfied when all is said and done — even though it is left open-ended — “because that’s six hours of your life. And that’s important… But I also want you to argue about what happened and that’s kind of half the fun about the show.”

Even if audiences don’t get the “easiest wrap up” as to where they went, “you’ll know who they were… and why they wanted to run away in the first place,” she added.

Starring alongside Dormer as the three students who mysteriously vanish are Samara Weaving (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” “The Babysitter”) as Irma Leopold, a Rothschild heiress; Madeleine Madden (“Tomorrow When The War Began,” “High Life”) as Marion Quade, daughter of a high court Justice; and Lily Sullivan (“Camp,” “Jungle”) as Miranda Reid, the rebellious tomboy who grew up with four brothers on a cattle station.

Natalie Dormer is mad about her latest gig, “Picnic at Hanging Rock.” Partly because she gets to go mad in the new Amazon limited series based on Joan Lindsay’s iconic Australian novel of the same name.
The former “Game of Thron…

Natalie Dormer knew “Picnic at Hanging Rock” was the perfect next project for her when she received a personal letter from director Larysa Kondracki. “It said, ‘I need this woman not to be an archetype. I need her to be three-di…

Joan Lindsay’s much-acclaimed 1967 Australian novel “Picnic At Hanging Rock” has already resulted in one stunning adaptation — Peter Weir’s 1975 film of the same name — so a second attempt, this time a television series, may already feel unnecessary. B…

“Picnic at Hanging Rock,” the new TV adaption of the Australian cult classic, kicked off the Berlin Film Festival’s TV sidebar Monday, and while the show has been generating quite a bit of buzz, getting it made was initially tough because of the long shadow cast by Peter Weir’s critically acclaimed 1975 film adaptation of […]

Posh frocks, smoldering sexuality and a trail of plausible, but ultimately frustrating, clues made for a great mystery back in 1975, when “Picnic at Hanging Rock” first appeared on the big screen. The tale of schoolgirl disappearances, deception, and voyeurism remains a beacon of Australian cinema and launched the directing career of Peter Weir. But […]

While entertainment news headlines in the United States have been dominated for the past few months by stories of misconduct against women within the Hollywood studio system, many international studios and production companies are using the opportunity at Berlinale’s Drama Series Days to debut projects that put female characters front and center in the narrative. […]

Deutsche Telekom has snagged exclusive German rights to “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” the Australian TV drama that opens this year’s Berlinale Series and that its star, Natalie Dormer, says will take “the audience on a surreal ride.” German telco DT will run “Picnic” in six weekly installments on its EntertainTV service rather than dropping all […]

Australian drama “Picnic at Hanging Rock” and AMC series “The Terror” are among the seven scripted TV projects that will feature in the Drama Series Days running alongside the Berlin International Film Festival. The TV component of the Festival has been growing in size and importance, and Israeli series “Sleeping Bears,” German-originated drama “Bad Banks,” […]

The BBC has picked up Fremantle Media‘s Natalie Dormer-fronted Australian drama Picnic at Hanging Rock. The deal follows an agreement by SVOD service Amazon to pick up the crime thriller in the US.
It is the latest Australian series to air on the British pubcaster following deals for shows including The Slap and dystopian sci-fi thriller Cleverman. The series, a re-imagining of Joan Lindsay’s classic Australian novel, is directed by Larysa Kondracki, the Canadian…

The BBC will take British viewers on a “Picnic at Hanging Rock” with Natalie Dormer next year after scooping exclusive U.K. rights to the hotly anticipated TV adaptation of the classic movie and novel, Variety has learned. The show was produced in Australia for pay-TV platform Foxtel and its Showcase channel, which will launch it […]